Steganography is a technical field relating to the embedding of data into material such as video material, audio material and data material in such a way that the data is imperceptible in the material.
Watermarks are data embedded in material such as video material, audio material and data material. A watermark may be imperceptible or perceptible in the material.
A watermark may be used for various purposes. It is known to use watermarks for the purpose of protecting the material against, or trace, infringement of the intellectual property rights of the owner(s) of the material. For example a watermark may identify the owner of the material.
Watermarks may be “robust” in that they are difficult to remove from the material. Robust watermarks are useful to trace the provenance of material which is processed in some way either in an attempt to remove the mark or to effect legitimate processing such as video editing or compression for storage and/or transmission. Watermarks may be “fragile” in that they are easily damaged by processing which is useful to detect attempts to remove the mark or process the material.
Visible watermarks are useful to allow, for example, a customer to view an image via, for example, the Internet to determine whether they wish to buy it but without allowing the customer access to the unmarked image they would buy. The watermark degrades the image and the mark is preferably not removable by the customer. Visible watermarks are also used to determine the provenance of the material into which they are embedded.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,369 (Cox et al) it has been proposed to embed data into material such as images to form a watermark by converting the material into the transform domain and adding the data to the image in the transform domain. For the example of images and the Discrete Wavelet Transform of these images, the data to be embedded can be combined with the wavelet coefficients of one of a plurality of sub-bands which are formed in the transform domain. Generally, the data to be embedded is arranged to modulate a predetermined data sequence such as a Pseudo Random Bit Sequence (PRBS). For example, each bit of the data to be embedded is arranged to modulate a copy of the PRBS, and this copy is then added, for example into one of the sub-bands of the image in the transform domain. The image is then converted back to the spatial domain.
If it is desired to detect and recover the embedded data from the image, the image is converted back to the transform domain and the embedded data is recovered from the sub-band in the transform domain by correlating the transform coefficients in the sub-band with the PRBS which is known to the detecting apparatus. The data is detected from the result of the correlation.
Generally, it is desirable to reduce to a minimum any perceivable effect that the embedded data may have on the information material such as images. However it is also desirable to increase the likelihood of correctly recovering the embedded data from the information material, in spite of errors which may be introduced as a result of any processing which may be performed on the material.